'The ultimate aim of any technical system must be to establish a number of stylistic premises, sufficient to liberate the composer from the need to identify himself afresh with each new work and so to free his imagination by removing the burden of absolute choice. Or this is the theory.'Susan Bradshaw (1931-2005) The instrumental and vocal music; Pierre Boulez: A Symposium. (pg128-129)
Amid this motley procession of works that passed in front of my increasingly overstrained eyes, one score suddenly arrested my attention and assailed my curiosity. Composed for soprano voice with piano accompaniment, it immediately struck me by virtue of its uniqueness. In retrospect I think it must have been The Sayings of Péter Bornemisza.Pierre Boulez 'Birthday Greetings' to György Kurtág, from the Hungarian Quarterly.
My queries yielded the information that the composer, György Kurtág, whose name was totally unknown to me (I later found out that this work had actually been performed in Darmstadt in 1968, but I hadn't set foot in Darmstadt since 1965, following years of perhaps good, and certainly loyal, service!) was working on a piece entitled Messages of the Late Miss R.V. Troussova for soprano and a small orchestra.
I immediately seized on the opportunity and, following some complications of the practical sort, we managed to produce a meticulously rehearsed performance as well as the first recording of this piece. Thus began a sustained relationship whose milestones were set by compositions that consistently displayed genuine originality within a thoroughly personal sphere.
After consulting the archives of the Ensemble Intercontemporain I realised that, curiously enough, to this very day we have never performed The Sayings of Péter Bornemisza, the work to which I owe my discovery of this utterly singular composer. I hope that we will have a chance to perform it in the near future, even if it was not exactly written for a birthday celebration.
Taken from this interview and this one at Andante.com. (another part in the same series is here).Jed Distler: What about free improvisation?
Pierre Boulez: You can improvise with dissonant chords, or chords which are not related, or parallel chords. That's true. That can be a source of inspiration. Even Beethoven improvised, maybe to excite himself, but he wrote the piece. And that was more important. I don't think you can improvise his Op. 106 [the "Hammerklavier" Sonata]!
.....
JD: How can one learn to compose in the computer age?
PB: First, I think you have to learn by yourself. You learn through analyzing scores. Not because you have read analyses written by other people. That can be an introduction, but in the end you have to learn how to analyze the scores yourself. You have to learn how to be confronted by the scores of other composers. Then you learn how to compose. But that's a very personal, individual task, and nobody can really teach you that.
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